Gaining Perspective
by Bevin
Summary: 12, shounen ai. A short introspection fic. Duo tries to keep from going insane from boredom after a mission. Romance isn't the right genre, but it was the closest approximation.


Notes: I own neither of the two main characters, nor any other characters mentioned in this work. They all belong to Bandai, sadly. If they were mine, I could afford food. No insult is intended through this story; I love these characters and this is the only way I know how to adequately express it. Sad, yes? Oh yeah, and it's shounen ai (yaoi-lite), proceed at your own risk.

Gaining Persepctive

The God of Death needed a shower and he needed it now. He needed a long, hot, steamy shower with lots of lather, sterile-smelling soap, and decent acoustics. Then he needed a big greasy hamburger with all the fixings, over-salted french fries and a milkshake thick enough to pop a vein in his forehead, and then a two-day nap in the biggest, softest bed in the known galaxy. Some good manga would be nice too.

"Duo."

The craggy waterstained wall came into clarity and the God of Death mourned the passing of his coveted fantasy.

"Yeah?"

He hated that wallpaper. The ugly yellow, waterstained cancer that would probably cling to the room until it sucked the last vestige of life from it.

"You're humming."

Yuy was certainly no help. The Perfect Soldier could care less about not having creature comforts. Didn't need them and wouldn't know what to do with them if he had them, so he was less than sympathetic to his partner's plight.

"Was I?"

God he hated that wallpaper. It was mocking him, he knew it. After he went to sleep it probably sat there watching him with mildewy eyes, laughing some saffron-colored laugh and wait for him to crack. Well he'd show it. He wasn't anywhere *near* cracking, let it cackle to its heart's content!

"Hn."

Bad enough he was stuck there with *him*. Why, of all people, did he have to be stuck in this God-awful pit with *him*? Quatre, Trowa, even Wufei would have been preferable to Heero I-Can-Kill-You-With-My-Pinkie Yuy.

"Sorry."

It wasn't so much that Duo didn't enjoy his company, in fact that was the problem. He found himself starting to enjoy it a little too much lately, and it was disturbing the crap out of him. More than once he had caught himself staring a little too long at the Japanese pilot, standing a little too closely to him and not even realizing it, and then just the previous night there had been that dream. Nothing really happened in it, and that had been the disturbing part. It was just him and Heero sitting across from each other in a white void looking at each other. Upon awakening he had felt confused, uneasy, and slightly aroused, and he really didn't know how he felt about that.

So he now found himself staring at one sallow, blistering wall for the fourth consecutive hour, his back to the pilot of Wing Zero, whose eyes he had refused to meet all day.

That was another thing: Heero had been meeting his gaze a lot more recently. Nothing profound or sentimental was in them, they were still the same eyes they had always been, but the fact that he was seeing more of them these days was beginning to make him a little uncomfortable. The whole damn thing was making uncomfortable! He *liked* it when Heero looked at him and he didn't want to!

"Duo."

Oh God, why why whyyyy was he stuck in a small room with *him* until they were picked up??

"Yeah?"

Why did his guts twist up into balloon animals when he spoke with that almost ridiculous voice of his? Why did he get the uncontrollable urge to run his hands through that mop of messy hair at the stupidest times? Why did he not know if he was coming or going or flying or falling or elated or nauseous when those piercing, unforgiving eyes found his own?

"You're humming."

He wasn't gay!! God dammit, he wasn't!! He liked girls, they turned him on, they always had, they always would! It was just the fact that he and Heero had to spend so much time together working under stressful conditions. It was all in his head, it was just a stress-induced reaction, that was *all*.

"I was?"

The fact that Heero sometimes looked like an attractive girl didn't help matters much, that was just all it was. He needed a lay with a hot chick and maybe to fix something and grunt and scratch himself while watching a movie where lots of stuff blew up. Maybe barbecue something while he was at it. Watch ESPN and go drinking with some buddies and tell dirty jokes and all that manly stuff that men did.

"Hn."

Of course the fact that Duo wasn't old enough to get into a bar or that he didn't own a barbecue or have much interest in ESPN or that he was sick to death of constantly fixing things and scratching himself and grunting weren't so much manly gestures as just things he did when he itched and the fact that most girls his age wouldn't sleep with him due to very possessive parents, strict curfews, and a highly developed sense of chastity, and older women would probably just laugh at him, were what mostly kept him from doing those things. He had a feeling they were overrated anyway.

"Sorry."

Just go back to the fantasy about the shower and the food and the bed. It'd be healthier, less stressful and it'd take his mind off the smug wallpaper and the sullen roommate which were both too close and inescapable for his peace of mind. But he couldn't seem to get back there, his subconscious had rebelled and stalled out in front of the roommate aspect of things. Back to Heero, it was always back to Heero. Dammit dammit dammit! This was driving him crazy!

"I need a shower."

Without waiting for a response, Duo vacated the spot in front of the wall, ignoring the triumphant chortling left in his wake, and scooted into the closet that someone had expected to pass for a bathroom. Clothing shed, he jumped into the spray as soon as the water ran clear, not caring what the temperature was. There was no shampoo or conditioner or even soap but he didn't care, he just needed something to do, something to take his mind off everything for a little while before he completely lost it.

Rattling pipes and hissing spray disguised the sound of the door opening and Duo suddenly found himself revealed to the very person he had been escaping when the shower curtain was yanked back. A yelp that came out closer to a shriek escaped him before he realized it and he reflexively grabbed at the mildew-stained plastic that really did very little to conceal his pertinent bits anyway.

Though that didn't seem to matter as Heero wasn't looking at any of his pertinent bits. Those unnaturally blue eyes that shouldn't have belonged to anyone, let alone a fifteen-year-old Japanese pilot who was too pretty for his own good, were locked almost painfully onto Duo's own wide violet ones.

What did those blue eyes see when they looked at him? Did they see gender or race or did he just see people? Hell, did he even see that much? Maybe all he saw were walking bullseyes and potential targets, but Duo doubted it. 

Yellow and white sneakers squeaked against worn porcelain as Heero stepped into the tub, eyes never leaving Duo's. Water soaked his clothing and his hair, melding both to his skin and going unnoticed, all attention focused on the young man now pressed against the cold shower wall with a clear plastic shower curtain spread over his waist. No, the Shinigami pilot thought, he didn't think he saw the social taboos associated with this when he looked at him. He didn't see anything remotely resembling that in those clear eyes.

The braided pilot suddenly found himself jealous of the strange kind of innocence his partner possessed. He wished he could see the world in such black and white terms sometimes, to see people without classification or labels. But he had been brought up in the world, the harshest of all worlds where classification and labels were made abundantly clear very early on. First from the street, then from the church, taboos and social ramifications of this sort of thing were screaming through his brain even as that intense gaze made his blood freeze in his veins.

"I..." he stammered, unable to break the stare despite himself. "I'm not gay." It sounded more like a plea than a statement to his ears. Still they stared, water hissing down on them both, steam fogging their eyes and lungs, neither noticed.

"Neither am I."

No, he wasn't, was he. But then what was gay to Heero Yuy? Nothing, probably. Then why should it be anything to him either? Being gay had always been fine by him as long as it was one of those things that happened to other people. But now that he was confronted by it himself, he felt the intellectual fear at war with the physical yearning and he decided all at once that he didn't care.

"Well, as long as we cleared that up."

Kissing, Duo decided, was a far better hobby to take up than faking machismo. After all, who needed to scratch himself when you had someone else to do it for you?


End file.
